Myth: People die from reactions to the flu vaccine.
Fact: There have been no deaths attributed to the flu vaccine, despite media coverage from Utah, where a mother claimed that her son died as a result of getting this injection. While it is a very small possibility that the vaccine was responsible for the death of this otherwise healthy 19-year-old man, experts believe that there was another cause of this young man’s death, which will remain unknown, because his mother refused to allow an autopsy.
There are risks associated with the flu vaccine, including an anaphylactic reaction to gelatin, which occurs in about one in every 2 million people, but even those patients typically do not die. There are also people with egg allergies who should opt for a cell-based or recognizant flu vaccine, in which the virus has not been cultured in egg.
Myth: People don’t die from influenza unless they have an underlying condition.
Fact: Healthy people die from the flu every year. They include otherwise healthy adults who had no other conditions until contracting the virus, and children with no underlying conditions. In 2013, studies show that 90 percent of the children who died from the flu had not been vaccinated against it. And while the number of lab-confirmed flu deaths for children is not high, many of these deaths would otherwise have been preventable with a flu vaccine.
There are also many times that healthy patients don’t have influenza listed as a cause of death on a death certificate because their illness led to a secondary complication, such as pneumonia.
Myth: The flu shot doesn’t work for me because I got it last year and got the flu anyway.